Australian Fish Photos, Seafood Photographs and Information

Directory & Info for Fishing, Angling, Fishing Tackle, Fishing Guides, Fly Fishing, Bass Fishing, Sports fishing, Game Fishing....
See >> Info on All types of Fishing | Angling | Tackle etc

Photos of  Australian Seafood, Fish, Crustaceans & Cephalopods and Information on each....

Beche De Mer
(Sea Cucumber - Trepang)

Catching Tailor:

Tailor are known as Bluefish in USA.

Tailor are one of the most popular recreational angling species.  Estimates indicate that there are more tailor taken by recreational fishermen than commercial operators.

Tailor can be found in waters ranging from estuaries and brackish waters, along surf beaches and rocky headlands and are occasionally found offshore near the surface and depths up to 50 metres.

Spawning usually takes place from late winter to early spring.  They are serial spawners (that is they release eggs and milt on a number of occasions during the spawning season)  Large females may produce more than 1 million eggs.  The eggs are pelagic.

Juvenile tailor feed upon small crustaceans, cephalopods and fish, while adult tailor prey mainly on smaller schooling fish, particularly pilchards, sea garfish and sea mullet.  Tailor are cannibalistic and can be caught using tailor flesh as bait.

Anglers mainly fish for tailor using rod-and-line from beaches or rock platforms using whole baits of pilchard or sea garfish.  The baits are presented on 3 to 4 'ganged' (joined together through the eye of each hook) hooks.  The use of metal lures or 'spinners' is also popular.  Tailor are mainly caught at dawn and duck when the fish move closer inshore to feed.

Tailor are fished for in a variety of ways. One of the most productive techniques is to cast and slowly retrieve un-weighted or very lightly-weighted pilchards and garfish rigged on ganged or linked hooks. These gang-hooked rigs can also be used under bobby cork floats, or with heavier sinkers when casting distance is required, particularly on the beach. Fish flesh strips and small live baits will also attract tailor, and they are one of the commonest lure-caught fish in our waters. They strike at a wide range of cast-and-retrieved or trolled chrome slices, spoons, lead slugs, minnows, jigs and flies. A light wire trace is helpful to resist the tailor's razor sharp teeth, although this fish rarely bites-off ganged hooks or large, hard-bodied lures.

There are all sorts of ways to catch a tailor. The traditional approach is to cast and slowly retrieve whole pilchards or garfish on ganged hooks, ideally using an Alvey sidecast reel and a long rod. This technique is about as deadly as it gets when it comes to specifically targeting tailor. But there are other methods that work pretty well, too. Metal casting lures are highly effective at times, and so are plastic and timber minnows, or even surface poppers. Saltwater flies also work a treat on choppers. So, it must be said, do soft plastics. Some anglers curse tailor for ripping up their rubbers, but others don’t mind quite so much, especially when the fish are a decent size. A one or two dollar tail seems a fair price to pay for tangling with a kilo-plus chopper.

In addition to destroying soft plastics, tailor teeth are famous for cutting lines — or fingers (hence their popular nick-name "Choppers")! Ganged hooks prevent most chop-offs, unless a bigger greenback swallows the bait deeply and gets its dentures to the leader. Then it’s usually all over, and very quickly. Smaller lures, and especially flies, are much more problematic and, to be on the safe side, it’s not a bad idea to rig a short length of wire ahead of any such offering. As always, wire is a trade-off. Using it will definitely cost you bites and limit your by-catch. Not using it may cost you a trophy tailor. Keeping the trace as light and short as possible certainly helps, and 15 cm of fine, multi-strand wire is usually plenty of insurance when dealing with tailor, even big greenbacks. All the same, don’t expect to catch too many bream when you’re rigged that way.

Saltwater Fish - What bait to use for fishing - a list of saltwater baits with the main "diners" who will be tempted.

See Also:
Tailor (Pomatomus saltrix) Photographs and Information
Fishing for Tailor or Bluefish
Cooking Tailor or Bluefish | Recipes using Tailor
Commercial Fishing for Tailor (Pomatomus saltrix) | Tailor Fishery